This Bitter Earth Part 17

Gloria stepped down the stairs and off the bus and Seth scooped up both her and Jewel as soon as her foot hit solid ground.

"Baby, baby, baby!" was all he could say as he twirled them *round and 'round.

The old men straightened their backs and grinned toothless grins.

"Seth Taylor! My Lord, man!" Gloria tried to scold him in between giggles. "Stop it now, you'll make the baby sick." Her laughter was m.u.f.fled by the kisses Seth covered her face and mouth with.

"Gimme my baby girl!" he said as he s.n.a.t.c.hed Jewel from her mother's arms and began tossing her up in the air.

Jewel let out a wail of disapproval and then proceeded to puke all over her father's new s.h.i.+rt.

"You a fool!" Gloria exclaimed, trying to pry Seth's fingers from his daughter's waist.

"A fool for my girls!" Seth screamed, not even caring that he was covered in sour milk.

The men grinned wider and nudged each other.

Joe touched the now tender spot on his head once more before clearing his throat and making his presence known.

"Oh, h.e.l.lo, Mr. Taylor." Gloria acknowledged him as if he were a business a.s.sociate of her husband*s, rather than his father.

Joe smiled and stepped toward her.

"Oh," she said when he leaned in, gently taking her arm and kissing her on the cheek.

"Gloria," Joe said and smiled.

"Oh," she chirped again and then pulled away.

"There's my grandbaby!" Joe beamed and slapped his hands together. "Give her here, Seth."

Seth looked at Gloria for approval; it was a quick look that Joe would have missed had he blinked. His eyebrows came together and the light went out in his eyes.

"Go ahead, honey," Gloria said.

Seth handed the baby off to his father and when Joe looked down into the face of his one and only grandchild a smile as bright as the sun spread clear across his face.

"Y*all done good. Y'all done real good," Joe said.

Seth didn't think he could feel more pride than he'd been feeling since his little girl came into this world. Now he knew he could and felt his chest swell.

Mercy stepped off the bus and around the people who cooed into Jewel's face.

"Sorry," Seth said when Mercy accidentally brushed against him. Their eyes met for a moment and then fell away.

"C*mon little one," Gloria said as she reached for Jewel. "Let's get going before these nasty bugs and mosquitoes have their way with you." Gloria slapped at her neck and forearm and shot her husband a look of disgust.

Seth moved in quick, throwing his arm over his wife's shoulder. "The car is over here," he said as he guided his family away from the bus.

"I guess I'll get the bags," Joe mumbled, shaking his head in dismay. He touched the tender spot on his head again before shoving his hands deep into his pockets.

"Whipped," one of the old men said, snickering.

Joe wasn't sure which one of the men had said it. It really didn't matter. The truth was the truth and Joe never argued the truth.

Sugar moved down the aisle of the bus in slow motion. Her body seemed to float.

She wished it were all a dream, wished it were ten years ago and that she was back in Short Junction surrounded by the sounds of the Lacey women and the scent of stewing apples.

But she wasn't. This was Bigelow, where the middle of her life had unfolded and then crumbled.

Sugar stepped down off the bus; her sandal-clad feet slipped slightly in the Arkansas dirt.

The grinning men took her in and nodded h.e.l.lo.

"Seth! Seth! Which one of these suitcases belong to her?"

The voice was as unmistakable as the name it called and both froze Sugar right where she stood.

Sugar slowly turned her head toward the sound of the voice that she knew so well, hoping that it belonged to a face she didn't know at all.

"Seth, c*mon over here, boy, and tella""

Joe's words did not trail off and sail away into the early Arkansas evening; they dropped off suddenly and were swallowed up by the earth beneath his feet.

Their eyes locked and before Joe could take a step toward her, his heart broke loose from his chest and Joe keeled over right where he stood.

There were still plenty of people left in Bigelow that could remember the first time she walked into town. It had only been ten years ago and while ten years may seem a long time to some people, it's no time at all to most.

Any wounds she'd inflicted during her stay there had long since healed (except for Joe's and Pearl's) and the people of Bigelow had not even bothered to favor her into folklore.

The memory of her had been buried beneath the civil rights activities that seemed to follow her departure, and then there was the Vietnam War to consider.

At the moment her second coming was eventful only to the man who'd fallen unconscious to the ground and the one that was running up from behind her screaming, "Daddy! Daddy!"

Seth moved past her so hard that Sugar spun around in a full circle.

"Daddy!" Seth was kneeling over his father, struggling to flip him over. Sugar looked down on Seth's back, on the clean blue s.h.i.+rt and the tight muscles that strained beneath the material and she was thrown back to the night he walked through the fog and into her life.

She stumbled as the memory was ruined by the sound of screeching car tires and the heavy sound of Lappy Clayton's voice in her ear calling her a b.i.t.c.h.

She was heavy now, heavy all over, and the air was becoming too thin to breathe. She grabbed hold to the side of the bus.

Seth had Joe on his back now, still calling to him as he slapped at his cheeks and shook him frantically by the shoulders.

The two old men stood close by, their lips pressed tight as they watched and waited.

Mercy thought about her grandmother as she stared down at Joe and wondered if this was what death looked like.

"Uha"uha"" There were words struggling to get out of Joe's mouth.

"Daddy?" Seth was shaken and his words spilled out in waves.

"Uh-uh-uh," Joe sounded again and his eyes came to rest dead on Sugar's face. "Shhhha"" Joe tried to get her name out.

"What you trying to say, Daddy?" Seth asked, leaning into his father. The two old men folded their hands behind their backs and stepped closer to the two men.

"Shhha"Shhha"Sugar." It was out and Joe slumped back into the ground and closed his eyes.

Joe felt euphoric. Seeing her, even saying her name had eased the guilt that he'd been plagued with since her departure. He thanked G.o.d for the second chance to set things right.

"What? Daddy, what you say?" Seth grabbed hold of his father's s.h.i.+rt and began to shake him again.

Joe's hand went up and shoved his son's shoulder, indicating that he was fine and didn't need to be shook, slapped or yelled at any more. "I'm okay," he uttered.

The sun was in his eyes and Sugar looked like a tall dark shadow. Joe blinked and told himself that the heat of the day and the b.u.mp on his head was causing him to see things.

Sugar stood still. She'd heard her name come off Joe's lips, even from where she stood it had come across as clear as crystal, so she couldn't understand how Seth could have missed it.

"s.h.i.+t," Seth spat as he dragged his hands down the sides of his face in frustrated relief. The worry dripped from his face as Joe smiled a.s.suredly at him.

"You scared the h.e.l.l outta me, Daddy," Seth said as he rolled his head on his neck, trying to loosen the knot of tension that'd set in.

Joe just gave Seth a foolish grin.

"Now you grinning like it's funny?" Seth said, still not at ease enough to smile, but allowing a chuckle to embrace his words.

Sugar wanted to disappear, jump back on the bus, get swallowed up by the earth, anything to be gone from that spot and away from those two Taylor men.

It was too soon to see Joe; she hadn't expected him to be right there as she stepped off the bus. And Seth, that was a whole other issue. She hadn't expected to ever see him again, not ever.

Seth raised himself up from the ground. He stepped backward to dust the dirt from his pants legs and stumbled right into Sugar.

"S-sorry, Miss," he said, turning around and looking dead into Sugar's eyes.

Seth spent two years trying to forget about her. Spent weeks at the bottom of a whiskey bottle trying to figure what had gone wrong between them, tossed and turned in his bed for months because Lappy Clayton walked heavy and loud through his dreams and laughed himself into his nightmares.

Seth couldn't stand the sound his bedsprings made when he lay down at night because it reminded him of Sugar and that half-breed man Lappy, and how the sound of her creaking bedsprings split the night around him when he stood waiting and wondering below her open window.

He couldn't stand that sound for a long time, and had thrown his mattress down onto the floor and slept that way until he met Gloria.

He was surprised she'd even noticed him. He was rail thin by then, with dark circles under his eyes and a nervous tic that pulled the corners of his mouth up and down whenever he wasn't engaged in conversation, which was most times.

She'd come into the diner and taken a seat right at the counter, smiling sweetly and purring her response to Seth's request for her order.

"Coffee, black, two sugars."

He hadn't even noticed how soft and supple her lips looked beneath the rose-colored gloss, or her long lashes and b.u.t.ton nose. Every man in the diner had noticed that and more, but to Seth she was just another paying customer.

It took at least three months and hundreds of cups of coffee for him to realize that she was a woman, and a beautiful woman at that.

A beautiful woman that didn't need to walk two blocks out of her way and past three coffee shops in order to get to his.

"Man, she live on 121st Street, near Pop's and Viola's Chat and Chew and Morton's. But she come all the way over here to sip her coffee and Lord knows your coffee ain't but a half a step over s.h.i.+t!"

"She had a man, a fellow name Nickel, from the Heights, but he got in some mess and then just disappeared. Now she single. Single."

"Heaven knows what interest she got in you. Man, you look like the walking dead if you ask me, but she asked my wife the other day if you were married or had a woman."

The men that seemed to spend more time at his counter than at home or work teased and taunted him about Gloria until finally he took a chance and spoke to her about something other than what was on special for the day.

One Tuesday morning as the rain fell outside his window and dawn remained camouflaged behind gray clouds, Seth lay awake mentally counting out the money he had banked away in Lincoln Federal Savings and realized that that was all he had and nothing more.

He sat straight up as if awakened from a long dream and looked around the room he'd been renting for the past five years. Two pairs of shoes, one pair for work and one for weddings and funeralsa"neither of which he attended. A black suit that hung limp from the hook at the back of his closet door and was in need of a good dry cleaner.

There was the picture of his family enclosed in a simple silver frame, a bottle of cologne he got from a customer one Christmas, his watch and a small Bible his mother gave him when he turned eighteen and struck out on his own. All of these items were lined up neatly across the top of his dresser.

There was the car, the diner and the bank account. That was it and had been enough until that Tuesday morning.

He was thirty-four years old with no wife or children and no prospects. His days were filled with sunny-side-up eggs, grits, chopped barbecue and open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches.

Seth thought about what the men said about Gloria, decided that he would take another chance at that part of his life and went down to Chuck's for a professional cut and shave.

Gloria's mother, Loretta, was the one who'd found Seth. She had stumbled onto the diner and the sorry-looking man behind the counter quite by accident.

She was looking for a husband for herself and wouldn't have minded a younger man. The two she'd buried had after their demise greatly increased her bank account, but during their life, had done nothing for her s.e.xual appet.i.te.

When she wandered into the diner, she'd almost recoiled at the sight of Seth, but business was business and her trained eye wandered to his ring finger and saw that there was no ring present, not even light-colored flesh indicating one had ever been there.

Loretta patted her red hair into place and thought that he would be good for her daughter Gloria. Loretta liked her men tall and meaty. The man waiting for her to give him her order looked as frail and fragile as the dying potted plant sitting in his front window.

"Girl, he ain't married and look like he got one foot in the grave."

"Maybe he got a disease?"

"A disease of the heart is what he got."

"A bad heart? Nu-uh, Mama, I don't want no man dropping dead on top of me."

"Not like that, I mean he's heartbroken."

"Really?"

"That's the word around Harlem."

"Really?"

And so Gloria began her quest to snag the only single black businessman in Harlem.